He is the founding director of the National Institute of Health's BioMicroElectroMechanical Systems or BioMEMS Resource Center at MGH.
Next Toner studied medical engineering[3] with Ernest G. Cravalho[9] at the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), completing his Ph.D. in 1989.
[10] In 1989 Toner joined the faculty of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and became an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Harvard Medical School.
[12] Toner's early work focused on understanding cellular injuries during cryopreservation and finding optimum strategies for cell preservation.
He has helped to develop microelectromechanical and microfluidic devices for point-of-care detection of cancer, AIDS, genetic defects and infectious diseases.
[7] He has received awards for the development of the CTC-chip, a microchip which can isolate and detect circulating tumor cells in peripheral blood.